LAW, THEORY, AND GEOGRAPHY

Abstract

The next two special issues of Urban Geography are devoted to law and geography, an emerging and important field of academic inquiry in the discipline. In this introduction, we consider the relationship between social science method as used by geographers and law as an institution. It is suggested that the common methodological suppositions of social science-foundationalism, functionalism, and reductionism-tend to limit the analysis of law in geography by privileging the latter over the former. Suggested are the rudiments of a rather different "theory" of law and geography, one based upon critical social theory and the "interpretive turn." The insights that geography can bring to this project are noted. The advantages of this approach over the standard social-scientific approach is that the institution of law, its normative appeal, and its adjudicative practices are given a central place in the study of law and geography.